young feet,
whithersoever his foolish young nose should choose to lead him; so that,
by the time he had walked into his twelfth year, a worse spoilt boy, a
vainer boy, a more self-conceited boy, a more self-willed boy than
master Sprigg was not to be found in the land--ransack the Paradise from
Big Bone Lick to the Mammoth Cave.

And yet, to put the question to such parents, as Jervis and
Elster--though with little expectation of receiving an audible
answer--what other result could reasonably have been looked for in a
boy, brought up, like Sprigg, to know no will but his own? This was the
very thing to render it next to impossible for him to know what his own
will really was and how he should use it, not knowing that of his elders
and wisers. This, in turn, was the very thing to keep him but ill at
ease with himself, and iller at ease, if not at downright loggerheads,
with everybody else.

Now, had Jervis and Elster been as wise as we are--you and I--they
would, at the very outset of their son's existence, have laid their own
will down, as the rule, whereby he should order his steps until the
beard on his lip announced him qualified to follow his own nose, without
too great danger of forgetting to allow that organ the help of his eyes
and ears. But as it was, they would have done a wiser and more
benevolent part by their boy had they given him a scalping knife,
without sheath, for a plaything, or a young bear, without a muzzle and
chain, for a pet. The knife might have cut off a few of his fingers, and
the bear might have clawed off some of his flesh, but the mischief done
would have been slight, compared to that of letting him have his will to
play with.

So, it were hardly to be laid to poor Sprigg's charge that he was mad
enough to figure as a warning example to juvenile evildoers; and it
were but Christian in us to draw our sketch of him with a soft nib to
our pen, softening down the lines with words from the law of love, which
is, or ought to be, written on all our hearts. Had he been as wisely
trained as he was affectionately cared for, there is no telling but that
Sprigg, instead of being one of the worst boys in the world, he might
have turned out to be one of the best--nearly as good, it may be, as a
brave little George, the boy, you know, who cut his father's cherry tree
with his little hatchet, and when the matter was inquired into, had the
courage to own that he was the offender, even while fully expecti